Israel’s 70th Birthday: Dear Mr. David Ben-Gurion

On May 14th, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared the Independence of the State of Israel after the approval of the UN Partition Plan in 1947 and the beginning of the war, he knew that the Egyptians could bomb him from the air. He knew that the 600,000 Jews who were in Eretz Yisrael were not safe. However, I do not think he imagined that 70 years later there would be a peace agreement with Egypt and Jordan. I do not think that Ben-Gurion would believe that ties and approaches (at the level of sharing intelligence) between Israel and the Gulf Monarchies are currently flourishing due to the push that Iran is promoting in order to lead the Muslim world and maintain that “geopolitical corridor” they lead from Tehran to Beirut.

Nor do I believe that Ben-Gurion would imagine that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel’s right to exist (ending the dogma that Jews have no right to settle in the land of Israel) and that Israel is not only a military power, but also an economic one. It is no coincidence that Israel has more high-tech companies on the Nasdaq than all the countries that make up the European Union today and that it is the place with the most start-ups per capita in the world. I do not think that Ben-Gurion would believe that Israel not only is the country that most reuses water in the world (86% of all the water consumed in the country is reused), but currently provides Jordan with 7% of all the water that this Arab country consumes. Without a doubt, I do not believe that Ben-Gurion would believe that Israel today would export natural gas to Egypt, nor would it believe that Israel has oil. Mr. Ben-Gurion, among us, Golda Meir was wrong!

I think that 70 years later Ben-Gurion would not have imagined that even though Jewish life on both sides of Jerusalem has fully revived, despite the fact that today there are more than 250,000 Arabs in that city since the end of the Six Day War in 1967. Nor do I believe that Ben-Gurion could have imagined that Israel, today more than ever and in spite of the ideological civil war that it is going through, is the eleventh country in the list of happiest countries in the world. Nor would it have been believed that the 4 tribes of which Rivlin speaks today are an existential reality.

Because Israel is not only the conflict (I believe that the spirit of the Oslo Accords must be taken to another level because the Palestinian Authority should control more than 70% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank that today lives under their regime), Israel is more than a small territory with a pretty-similar size to Galicia, Spain. Israel, dear Ben-Gurion, is a reality with many flaws-in which for now-there are no crazy people like Menachem Begin throwing stones in the Knesset. Dear Ben Gurion, Israel, is the future of the Middle East.